This is just a fairly quick post about getting yourself setup to
start having a play with Umbraco v5
Alpha 3 and see how its all coming together. Some of the step
by step below was stolen taken from Warren 'The director'
Buckleys email to everyone who went on the hackathon, but as I
found you need to check a few things first before you get started
hacking.
Some Things To Check First
Before you start, make sure you have the following installed on
your computer
Remember the easiest way to install most of the above is via the
web platform installer
http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx
My Tip Before You Start
If there is one tip I can give you from going to the hackathon
and the UK festival (Thanks again to Cogworks for organising
it!) and that is LEARN MVC 3! I know it sounds obvious,
but I had been playing with an MVC 3 app a few weeks before I went
and even for things like making Property Editors (What we used to
call DataTypes) it was immensely helpful and knowing things like
validation dataannotations was invaluable.
Check out the videos on the MVC site, they are awesome.
http://www.asp.net/mvc
Check IIS Express Is Enabled In Visual Studio
This is what screwed me for the first hour of the Hackathon - I
had IISExpress installed as I had Webmatrix working and I also had
Visual Studio SP1 installed, BUT for some reason Visual Studio just
didn't know IISExpress was there and I couldn't enable it in
VS.
One way to check VS knows you have IISEXpress is to open up
Visual Studio and click Tools > Options > Projects
& Solutions > Web Projects and you should see the
below - Tick it to be on the safe side if it is there for you. and
ignore the rest of this section.
IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE OPTION ABOVE
This was the problem I had… So I did the following
- Uninstall and reinstall IIS Express via WPI
- Re-install Visual Studio SP1
After this I was able to see the above options in VS and enabled
it.
Getting The Latest Source Off Codeplex
The below is based on you using the latest release as of today
'5.0.0-Alpha3' obviously if a new release comes
out after I have posted this, make sure you change the 'Clone to
revision' below to the version you want to get.
- Create folder on your computer called
V5_Alpha3
- Right click folder from context menu select Tortoise
HG
- Followed by Clone
- In the source box enter - https://hg01.codeplex.com/umbraco
- Extend the options
- Ensure Clone to revision is ticked and you
enter 5.0.0-Alpha3
- Then press clone and wait for it to
finish.
- Once done click close
Setting Up In Visual Studio
- Open the 'V5_Alpha3' folder on your computer
and browse to /Source/
- Open the VS Solution Cms.Development.sln
You will now get a popup like the below appear (This is to do
with IIS Express and why we made sure we had it installed
above)
- MAKE SURE YOU CLICK YES
- Right click on Umbraco.Cms.Web.UI and Set as StartUp
project
- VERY IMPORTANT STEP >> Set Environment
mode dropdown in toolbar to Debug
- Then hit F5 or click Start
Debugging
V5 will now launch and just following the installer as you
normally would 
Just A Quick Disclaimer
One thing you have to remember is v5 is still in alpha, and just
by listening to all the smart people talk to Alex & Matt at the
hackathon is was plain to see there is still going to be a lot of
changes. Changes for the good for developers like me &
you. Things like wrapping a lot of the more in-depth code to make
things like Trees, and Hive providers easier and quicker to
implement.
So hack away and get to know everything, but keep in mind that
things might change as V5 moves to Beta and then RC.
Lots Of Information Online To Learn More
I have to say, without doubt the hackathon was the best place to
learn for me - but there are still great places to get a lot of
great tips and material to learn more.
The Official Wiki
http://jupiter.umbraco.org/
The New v5 Contrib Project
http://umbraco5contrib.codeplex.com/
This already has the start of a Wordpress hive provider which
Alex and Matt did as an example, and will soon have a few Property
Editors that I'm going to upload. I'm sure a lot of other people
will be adding to it, so it will be a great place to explore and
see how people do certain things and use the code as a base for
your own versions.
Videos
All the codegarden 11 sessions on v5 are online for you to
stream or download on the Codegarden website.
http://codegarden11.com/sessions.aspx
Blog Posts
I have probably missed some other places but it shouldn't be
hard to Google around and find them
Shannons Blog
http://shazwazza.com/?tag=/Jupiter
Matts Blog
http://blog.mattbrailsford.com/
Umbraco Blog